Captives (Nightmare Hall) (12 page)

“There isn’t. And I’ve wasted too much time already. Maybe Molloy isn’t in that house. Maybe she isn’t anywhere near it. It’s not like I have any reason to believe that she is. But she
could
be, and I’m pretty sure
he
is. There’s only one way to find out for sure.”

“Well, you’re not going without me.” Simon went to the door, leaned against it, “Elise and Arthur can go find Officer Sloane. Me, I’m tagging along. Won’t do me any good to be pitching like a champ if I’m missing my second baseman.”

Ernie knew Simon meant it. The truth was, he was grateful. Reardon had gone to Nightmare Hall alone, and no one had heard from him since. It
would
be dumb to go into that place alone.

“Do you really think you can get through?” Elise asked as they all left the room. “I mean, the radio announcer said that the highway was closed between campus and town. That parts of it were flooded.”

“Well,” Simon joked, “we’ll only walk on the parts that aren’t flooded.”

The last thing Elise said to them as they parted outside of Devereaux was, “We’ll find Officer Sloane, Ernie. I promise. And we’ll make him go down there. Good luck.”

“We’ll need it,” Ernie muttered, and then he and Simon loped off across campus toward the highway.

T
HREE DOWN, ONE TO
go.

It’s so deliciously ironic that they tried to keep me from leaving. Me! Putting that dresser in front of the staircase door. As if that would stop me. A puny piece of furniture. What a joke.

It’s only a few steps from that staircase to the cellar door leading to my outside exit. I’ve been going in and out the whole time, and they never knew it.

Hell, the cops aren’t even close. Still checking the dorms. That’ll take them forever. Lucky for me.

Even if my last little victim tried the cellar door, it wouldn’t do her any good. I lock it from the inside whenever I go downstairs and, when I come back up, I lock it from the outside and pocket the key.

Meanwhile, I’m free to go wherever I want. Unlike the little pigeon hiding in the library, with her wings clipped.

If she had half a brain, she’d have been long gone. Wouldn’t leave her friends, though. How disgustingly loyal of her. I’ve never had friends who came anywhere close to that degree of loyalty. Wonder what it’s like to have friends like that? Friends who don’t turn on you, friends who wouldn’t even think of deserting or betraying you. What is that like?

Dangerous; at least in her case. Very dangerous.

I wonder how long it will take all of them to figure out who killed Dr. Leo?

I’ll be long gone by then.

Long
gone.

But first
…

M
OLLOY HAD NO IDEA
how long she crouched behind the couch waiting for Daisy to return. She had no sense of time. But after a while, the image of herself hunkered down in hiding made her stomach lurch in revulsion.

You’re planning on putting yourself through college with no help from anyone? she asked herself in scorn. Where exactly are you going to get the courage for that, if this is the best you can do?

I’m the only one of us in this house who’s still standing, she thought, getting to her feet. The folds of her long, wet skirt stuck to the carpet, and she had to tug on them. Lynne needs me. Toni needs me. And I’m not doing them any good curled up in here like a scared rabbit.

Daisy had done something. Daisy had gone for help. Until she returned, Molloy Book was the only hope for Lynne and Toni. A very scary thought. But true.

She had no flashlight. The house was very dark. She knew her way around a little, but she needed to see. Would there be a candle in the kitchen?

Her feet were freezing.

She would make her way to the kitchen, run into the bedroom and get a pair of socks, and then hunt for a candle and something to light it with. The stove, maybe. If it wasn’t electric.

Where
was
he now? Upstairs? Downstairs? In the cellar? Her ears strained for the slightest sound. She heard nothing but the wind howling around the house outside, and the fainter sound of steady rain assaulting the windows.

In the kitchen, she had to fight against the overwhelming urge to climb through the broken window, as Daisy had. Molloy had never wanted anything as much as she wanted to leave that house, run as far away from it as she could, until she was totally, completely safe. Her eyes went to the back door. There was something so terrifying about knowing that she couldn’t simply walk over to it and yank it open. That it was locked against her, making her a prisoner.

She went into the bedroom for a pair of socks.

And slammed, in the darkness, into something huge and solid. It knocked the breath out of her and she stumbled backward, almost falling. Catching herself in time, she felt with her hands to see what the thing was.

The dresser. The ugly old dresser that she and Daisy had struggled to move against the door to the back staircase, to barricade it.

What was it doing in the middle of the room?

Oh,
no!
He had moved it. Shoved it out of his way somehow, so he could enter the first floor.

Was he down here
now?
Where? In the closet? Under the bed? Behind a door somewhere?

Molloy listened again. Nothing. If he was down here, he was being very, very quiet. Hiding somewhere, quiet as a spider. A poisonous one.

Lynne had probably never even known what hit her. Someone must have come up behind her quietly, stealthily. Toni, too, probably hadn’t sensed what was coming before she flew out that window.

That’s
not
going to happen to me, Molloy thought with fresh resolve. She stood up very straight. She grabbed a dry pair of socks and sat on the bed to pull them on. Stood up again. Having warm, dry feet was amazingly comforting.
No
one, she thought again, is going to sneak up behind me. I’m not going to let that happen. I’m not sure how I’ll keep it from happening, but I will.

What she wanted most was to run up the stairs to the attic and make sure Lynne was still breathing. And then race through the house opening every door in a search for Toni.

Some sense of self-preservation kept her from doing either of those things. She’d be making herself too available to him. She had to stay alive for Lynne and Toni’s sake. And for her own, of course. The best way to do that seemed to be to stay in one place and defend it in every way she could think of.

For that, she needed light. And for light, she had to go into the kitchen. Where he might be hiding behind a door or under the table or in some dark corner.

She went slowly, lifting her feet without making a sound, feeling with her hands to avoid bumping into anything, her head constantly swiveling from side to side, her ears listening for the sound of breathing that wasn’t her own. She heard and saw nothing.

Once inside the kitchen, she had to fumble through four kitchen drawers before she found two stubby white candles. She lit them from the stove burners, which were gas, after all, and set them on saucers from the cupboard. Her hands were shaking the whole time, her ears straining for the slightest noise from above or behind her, and every second she had to fight a strong urge to jump from the kitchen window into freedom. Only thoughts of Lynne and Toni kept her from doing so.

Besides, she told herself, seeking even the tiniest bit of comfort, he moved the dresser. Maybe he did that so he could leave the house. He could have seen the window they’d broken and climbed out through it. He could be long gone now.

When she had the candles lit, one stationed on the round wooden table at the far end of the kitchen, the other on the kitchen counter at her end, she felt better.

The candlelight allowed her to move about more freely. The all-white kitchen was long and narrow, the table and chairs at one end, the cabinets and appliances at the other, the floor worn linoleum. There were three interior doors in the room. Cautiously, carefully, Molloy checked out each of them. One opened into a pantry, sparsely stocked with a few cans and some paper goods. Another door housed an oversized washer and dryer, and Molloy guessed that the third wooden door had to lead to the cellar.

She walked over to it and tried the knob. Locked. Maybe it was always locked. Or maybe
he
had locked it, as he had all the other doors, and had the key on him.

That would explain a lot. If the cellar had an outside entrance, he could have been going in and out that way the whole time, using the back staircase. Even the heavy dresser hadn’t stopped him.

He must be strong, Molloy thought, nausea rising in her as she turned away from the door.

A sudden image of Daisy climbing through the window and dropping to the ground appeared in Molloy’s mind. That was quickly followed by the sight of the dresser moved away from the staircase.

Oh, no. Oh, no! Daisy? Had he gone after Daisy?

I went into the library, Molloy thought, her eyes widening in dread, and then I heard those scuffling noises, and now the dresser isn’t barring the staircase. She leaned against the stove. Was that why Daisy hadn’t come back yet? Hadn’t she been gone an awfully long time?

Oh, he didn’t, he didn’t, she thought almost in prayer. Daisy was our only hope. He didn’t follow her, chase her through the woods, catch her, and hurt her like he did Lynne and Toni. I won’t believe that. I
can’t!

But if he had … if he had, then he knew that she was the only one left still standing in his way. With Daisy, and then Molloy, eliminated, he could stay in the house as long as he liked. Or at least until the roads were open again.

If he
had
gone after Daisy, had he come back to the house yet? If he hadn’t, maybe she could keep him out. She could put something in front of the cellar door, in front of all the doors, and over the bare kitchen window, to keep him out.

Molloy laughed softly, bitterly. Get real, she told herself in disgust. How do you expect to do it by yourself? You couldn’t lift anything heavy enough to keep him out.

She thought she heard something then, a soft, rustling sound from over her head. A tree branch brushing against a shutter outside?

How long would he wait before he came after her?

Why didn’t he just
leave?

But she knew he wouldn’t. He was angry with them, with all of them, for disturbing his hideaway. If they stayed, he would have to leave his nice, safe refuge and go out into that awful storm, try to find another place to hide until he could leave town. That must have made him furious, or he wouldn’t have done what he did to Lynne.

And now, he was punishing them. They were interlopers, intruders, and he couldn’t forgive that. So he had trapped them inside this place and punished them, one by one.

She was the only one left.

How was she going to protect herself from him?

Molloy heard the sound again. This time, it seemed louder, not so much a rustling noise as a feeble scratching, like fingers on sandpaper. It wasn’t coming from upstairs. It sounded very close … in this room somewhere.

There it was again, slightly louder this time.

Molloy took a few steps forward. The glow of the candle flickered across her face, turning it an eerie yellow. She was confused, uncertain.

Maybe it was him, trying to trick her. He’d draw her close to wherever he was, and then he’d lunge at her. She wouldn’t stand a chance against the kind of strength it must have taken to move that dresser.

But the scratching noise grew louder, began to sound frantic. Molloy, her eyes on the far end of the kitchen where the noise seemed to be coming from, wished fervently that she had Lynne’s baseball bat. She had to have something.

She grabbed a kitchen pot from the counter. It wasn’t much but it would have to do.

The noise was coming from behind the louvered doors that hid the laundry equipment. That was a large enough closet to hide even a big person. Was he in there? Trying to trick her?

The pot, hard and solid though it was, suddenly seemed harmless and useless.

But Molloy walked slowly, quietly, over to the doors, her socked feet sliding on the cold tile.

She slid the door on the left side open a fraction of an inch at a time.

“Help me,”
a voice whispered, so weakly that at first Molloy thought she’d imagined it.
“Someone help me, please.”

The voice didn’t sound masculine. And although the announcer on the portable radio hadn’t said whether or not police knew the gender of the psychologist’s killer she didn’t know many girls who could have hefted that dresser alone.

So, when the voice came again, whispering,
“Please! please!,”
Molloy, hoisting the metal pot above her head, shoved open both louvered doors.

There was nothing there but a mop and a broom, shelves holding laundry supplies and baskets, and the white, oversized, washer and dryer.

But Molloy still heard the noise. Tapping. Tap, tap, tap. Weakly, but steadily. Tap, tap, tap. Like … like fingers on glass.

Molloy bent at the waist, her eyes focusing on the washing machine’s glass front.

And screamed at the sight of hair, wet and straight, plastered to a face streaked with mud and blood, the eyes glassy with terror and desperation.

Molloy’s legs gave, and she sank to the floor, her face now level with the face in front of her. In spite of the mud, in spite of the blood, in spite of the way the glass distorted the features, she knew that face well.

She had found Toni.

M
OLLOY ROUSED HERSELF FROM
her shock enough to yank open the glass door of the front-loading washing machine.

“Can you move?” Molloy asked. “I want to get you out of there, but I’m afraid you might have some broken bones from the fall.”

Toni opened swollen lips. “Out,” was the most she could manage. “Out.”

Molloy got her out.

She half-slid, half-pulled, Toni from the washer. She was careful, gentle, but still Toni’s face twisted in pain, and she cried out twice.